It is no secret online poker needs regulation in the United States.  Countless attempts to discourage online poker have not succeeded.  There is no US law making online poker illegal.  Why not, therefore, regulate?

Poker Affiliate Solutions is thinking about this in the context of the issues at Ultimate Bet.  If you are unaware, the previous owners of Ultimate Bet were found to have security holes in their system, allowing rouge employees the opportunity to view opponent hole cards.

The current owners of Ultimate Bet dealt with the issue and have since refunded the wronged players.

The problem was that there was no protocol for dealing with this situation.  UB’s current ownership had to take it upon themselves.  If, however, there had been US regulation some time ago, anyone with a US license would have not only more stringent security measures, but protocol for dealing with the situation when uncovered.

The criticism of UB’s current ownership was not that the situation happened, it was that it was not dealt with fast enough.  Online poker regulation in the United States would remedy that situation.

It would be nice to say this will never happen again.  That cheating in online poker would be a thing of the past.  This is likely not the case, however.  This problem is not unique to online poker.  The Internet is full of hackers, attempting to take everything from a few bucks to your identity.  The United States have taken measures to help alleviate the problems generally on the Internet - why have they not taken steps to regulate online poker?

It used to be that, in the marketplace, you could compete on price or you could compete on other value added features. Examples include better product, better service, more features, etc. This is no longer the case. Now, you must have a better product with more features, the best customer service AND the lowest price.

This blanket statement may not hold true in the brick and morter world, but it is, no doubt, true online. Examine, for one, the king of the Internet, Google. Nearly all of their products are best in class with best in class features – adwords, adsense, gmail, analytics, feedburner and more. And they feature the best prices in all of their niches.

Sure, Adwords may be the most expensive in the search advertising space, but it more than makes up for it by being the best value.

As far as service is concerned, their products are so good and so complete that virtually no service is needed.

Content is often free. Email is often free. A myriad of Internet delivered services are free. And, on the Internet, best in class features and best in class pricing usually go hand in hand.

Poker Affiliate Solutions has taken these lessons to heart. No one else offers turnkey rakeback software completely branded to the publisher. Period. But we didn’t stop there. No one else offers better payout rates to publishers than PAS does either. Best in class features, best in class pricing – we’re learning from the Internet.

Note: Poker Affiliate Solutions is completely free to set-up. Best in class pricing means the highest payout rates TO THE PUBLISHER!

Many, if not most, affiliate marketers make money by supplying good, fresh content. In order to succeed, content must be helpful, relevant, current, and must entice further action. In addition, it must add value.

Despite being top-notch affiliate marketers, content is not our strong suit. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may know this already. I have been thinking about why this is the case. After all, we know the online poker industry as well as anyone. We’re all highly intelligent. We can add plenty of value. Some of us are even pretty decent writers.

But we are not, by nature, teachers. We expect a user to “get it.” This is the wrong approach when using content in affiliate marketing. A good content affiliate marketer teaches a user whatever she needs to know about the product she is going to buy or engage in. This is why affiliate monetization of a poker coaching site or strategy forum is often the perfect fit.

Monetizing existing sites is exactly what Poker Affiliate Solutions does. We provide tools for the good “teachers” to make more money from their “teaching” talents.

We have made a few hires recently to improve our content and our teaching on both Poker Affiliate Solutions and on our Rakeback from Raketracker retail property. The only difficulty of this decision was knowing that once we make the plunge, we need to keep our content fresh. And that is the difficulty of content for so many affiliate marketers. If this is not you, and your passion is selling through teaching and churning out great article after great article, our hats are off to you. And we’d love to help you make more money from your talents.

Are they the two most important things in Internet Marketing?

Hard to say - online poker affiliate marketing has so many components that dictate the level of success. But niche and brand are certainly foundations.

When we started marketing poker online five years ago, rakeback was actually quite a niche business. And we used our knowledge of the business, our first to market position, and our communication skills to excel in the niche. If you are going to dominate a niche, you need to know everything there is to know. We literally educated customers about rakeback one by one via email, IM, and private messages. (It’s that whole educating versus selling thing. Educating is better.)

Now, of course, rakeback is, if not the standard of poker affiliate marketing, certainly a staple. It’s no longer a niche business. There are many providers. Reliability, accuracy, statistics, knowledge, on-time payments, and good deals are now absolutely necessary just to get your foot in the door. But there have become niches within the rakeback industry, and there are many more yet to be developed.

Here is a simple but powerful example about niche based on Raketracker’s google analytics. These are conversion rates based on keyword (all for the last 75 days):

• Cake Rakeback - 8.33%
• Eurolinx Rakeback - 6.41%
• Ultimate Bet Rakeback - 4.00%  (This one will be going down as it appears we have lost position.)

Then:

• rakeback - 1.48%
• rake tracker - 1.06%
• raketracker - .58%

The more specific - the better the conversion.  aka Niche.

Niche turns into Brand by continually doing something in a consistent way.  Raketracker has paid rakeback to customers every month for the last 52+ months - it’s how we became one the strongest brands in rakeback.

If you were starting from scratch in rakeback today - make sure you think brand from day one.  Make sure your friends, people you play with, your friends friends and the people they play with all know that you’re the rakeback guy or the rakeback gal or the rakeback place.  Then make sure you are consistent in your actions.  Maybe you send personal notes with payments or call your top five players.  Do something unique and do it consistently.

And keep niche and brand in mind.

We have all heard to axiom, “The Customer is Always Right.”  There is, of course, some truth to this statement.  At Poker Affiliate Solutions we bend over backwards to give our customers whatever they need to succeed.

But we have learned a lot from being customers ourselves.  And the most important thing we have learned is: In order to get a deal done, we expect to put in the work to succeed.

For example, we have just had a major redesign done on one of our “retail” properties.  We needed to provide thoughts, mock-ups, feedback, and some technical work promptly.  We were the customer, yet we did things not on our timetable.  We did things when we were asked.  We of course could have said, “Next week is better for this bit of work.  We’ll get back to you then.”  But then, when the process slows, do we have any right to say, “Hey, why isn’t this done yet?”

We like to be the one who has done our part the best, the fastest, and the most complete, even when we are paying someone else for their part.

To succeed in Poker Affiliate Marketing, you need to get deals done.  A partner for accounts, a link exchange, content for content, feedback for feedback, a successful relationship with your affiliate manager, etc.  The need to work with other people is endless.  Our approach, and it has worked for us, is proactive.  What can we get done?  What can we give?

Because every time you make a partner better, you make yourself better.

Our Raketracker division is constantly running promotions to make things new and exciting for our existing customers and bring in new customers.  Freerolls, giveaways, rake races, and free memberships to coaching sites are just a few of the things we do.  We have no shortage of good and often unique ideas.  What we have is a problem - how do we promote the promotions?

The answer, I believe, lies not with gimmicky viral marketing tactics or linkbait.  It certainly doesn’t lie with spam.  The answer has to do with the fact that promotions should not be looked at as a frilly extra.  Promotions should be looked at as our business.  In fact, anything we do as part of our business is our business.

This means marketing.  Any promotion we do must follow the same format as the rest of our business.  Simple.  Consistent message.  Timely reporting.  Timely customer interaction.  Don’t expect overnight success.  Make it worth talking about.  Add value.

If we follow this formula, our promotions will be a success.

Most people are driven by fear and greed. If you play online poker, you can see it very acutely. Fear can overpower, then, within seconds, greed can consume you.

But not as many people realize the same exact thing can happen in a poker affiliate business. One minute you think you are taking over the online poker marketing space, the next you wonder if you will be able to eek out a living.

One way that this fear can manifest itself is perfectionism. If you constantly try to make everything perfect, you will never produce anything. Because nothing ever is perfect. Nothing. Ever.

So stop trying to make it perfect and keep trying to make it better.

Perfectionism comes from a fear of what other people will think of us or what we will think of ourselves. As hard as it is, realize that it’s none of your business what other people think of you. And realize it doesn’t f***ing matter anyway.

What you think of yourself is very important. That’s why putting forth your best effort in you poker marketing business is crucial. Once you can do that, you will be a success.

We know this because we lived through it ourselves. The software behind Poker Affiliate Solutions was literally years in the making. We resisted a formal web presence because we “didn’t think it was ready.” But it was better than good enough. It was great. Is great. Anything that can power another person’s business and literally make them hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars is GREAT.

Is it perfect, no. Will it ever be perfect? Probably not. But we have a whole office of people working on it to make it better. And that’s all we can do.

The results, when we finally launched the PAS website, have been overwhelming. Requests have poured in. That shows that once you put aside your fears and let your best efforts be known to all, you will then have the chance to succeed.

Poker Affiliate Goals

Poker Affiliate Solutions has crafted our goals for 2008.  When planning, we kept in mind the SMART method, and think that is valuable and necessary for anyone planning out business objectives.

S:    Specific

An overall vision is a necessary place to start, but goals need to be specific.  Get more business is not enough.  Continue to grow is not enough. So we have put specific targets on each of our business lines: Raketracker.com, YourPokerCash.com,  and Poker Affiliate Solutions.  We would like and have said things like: Maintain a top three position, be again known as the industry leader, equal our top competitor, etc.  But these things are not enough.

M:    Measurable

Because they are not enough, we put numbers on these things.  A top three position is not measurable for certain.  Neither is great customer service or being equal to our top competitor in this area.   However, just because your vision and “specific” goal doesn’t equal measurable doesn’t mean you need to find a new goal - it simply means finding a new way to make it measurable.

• CS Email response time.
• Search engine rankings
• Forum posts - by us and by others about us
• Overall customer count broken out amongst various product segments
• Overall revenue and revenue by product line
• New initiative roll out time

A:    Attainable

“One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can barely achieve through one’s greatest efforts.” - Albert Einstein

They key is to not set the bar too low.  We should rather set it very high and miss by a little than set it too low and lose motivation somewhere along the line.  However, incremental goals, which must also be part of the plan, must be relatively sure attains.

The next R is relevant, but it could also be realistic.  We aren’t going to master everything tomorrow.  Constant progress not just in hitting goals, but in improving our process and outlook is a must.

R:    Relevant

Relevant actually is realistic to some degree.  We must focus on what we do well.  Our goals must be aligned with what we are doing now.  There is no need to veer off unnecessarily.

This isn’t to say new ventures, new products, or new business lines aren’t important or shouldn’t be part of an overall plan.  It is simply to state that goals for those things should be relevant just to them.  Goals for specific areas of the business should stay within their area.  Once each is defined, it can be put together with a SWOT analysis to determine which has priority and where resources should be allocated.  Then, the list of goals can be redefined in order to help out the relevant and attainable pieces.

For example, we know we are the best at providing software solutions to poker affiliates wanting to offer rakeback.  That makes it far easier to create relevant and attainable goals.

T:    Time Based

Without a due date for both overall, and for incremental pieces, a goal might as well be a dream.

Good luck with your goal planning.